جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 5

Nyra’s POV “Watch where you’re going, freak!”The word hit before his shoulder did.My books jolted. My yearbook slipped from my grip and slapped the floor, pages flaring open like it was trying to escape me. The hallway swam with noise, laughter, footsteps, the shriek of a locker door, yet somehow that one word still found the centre of me, like it had a map to every bruise I’d ever swallowed.Freak.That was me. The pack’s wolfless unknown-origin mistake.Robert Wilson brushed past as if I’d deliberately thrown myself in his path. He didn’t even pause. He didn’t have to. Wolves like him, clean-blooded, wolf-strong, certain of their place, never had to stop for girls like me.I bent down slowly, swallowing the sting in my throat, and gathered my things with careful hands. The floor felt colder than it should have. So did the air. This was the usual treatment. I’d learned the hard way not to hope for anything better from the pack.“Can’t you smell where you’re going?” someone muttere

Nyra’s POV Kieran eyes flashed at my words, “You’re not.”But words weren’t enough tonight. They felt empty and hollow. A love he was ashamed of could not be real. But then why would he hold on for four years?“Then when will you tell them?” I asked, and my voice shook with how badly I needed the answer. “When will you stop pretending I’m a stranger?”Kieran went still.I watched the weight settle on him.Then he cupped my face and looked straight into my eyes like he meant it.“Soon,” he said. “I promise. Soon.”The word hit me like warmth.Like healing.Like the Moon finally turning her face toward me.I wanted to doubt him.I wanted to be smarter.But I’d been starving for so long, and he was the only thing that ever felt like food.So I nodded.I believed him.And in that belief, my body softened the way it always did when he spoke to me like I mattered.Kieran stood and pulled me up carefully, as if I were glass. He guided me to the bed, sat behind me, and drew me into his arms.

Nyra’s POV Kieran exhaled, the sound sharp, like it hurt him to breathe.“I didn’t want you to witness that,” he said, voice tight. “The dance. I didn’t want you standing there watching me with her.”I laughed once, small and hollow, and it scraped my throat on the way out.“You didn’t want me to witness it,” I repeated, like I was testing the words for meaning.His hands flexed at his sides. He looked like he wanted to reach for me and didn’t dare.“It was… protocol,” he said. “Serving the pack. Beverly was the ace student. It was either she danced with my father or with me. And it couldn’t be Father. Not tonight.”His words fell between us like stones.I nodded slowly, because my brain understood what he was trying to say.But my chest,My chest was doing something else entirely.Because it wasn’t the dance.Not really.It was the way he held her.The way he didn’t hesitate. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t scan the room first like it might explode if anyone saw his hand on a woman’s waist.H